Random comments on selected subjects

It’s 500 years (ignoring the effect of the Calendar Act 1750 and continental equivalents) since Friar Martin Luther sent his Bishop a list of 95 reasons why the Catholic Church shouldn’t sell indulgences. Indulgences are a pay-per-use means of getting off sins and Purgatory and gaining quicker access to Heaven, which generates the standard “progressive” objection that they allow the rich to buy salvation while the poor have to sit in Purgatory for years. (The rich point out that the Scriptures say “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven” and they therefore need as much help and support as they can get.)

Luther reportedly also attached these reasons (“theses”) to the Parish noticeboard on his church, which happened to be the church door.

None of the laity will have had a clue what the theses were about beyond something regarding the existing controversy regarding indulgences, St Peter’s Basilica, etc., as they were based on detailed interpretations of the Bible which was in Latin and therefore inaccessible. (The inaccessibility being the Point by this stage. Some of it had been translated into English, but Luther lived in Germany where they didn’t speak that much English, and in any event the translator had died and then been dug up and burned at the stake for heresy, which made his books a trifle less available in the ordinary authorised bookshops.) However, the Bishop did know what it was about and told Luther to recant, Luther refused and the Church was tragically obliged to excommunicate him. (He wasn’t burned at the stake, because he got kidnapped by a friendly noble and locked up in the Wartburg Castle until he translated the Bible into German.)

So to commemorate, here are ten things you can put on your parish noticeboard.

The contact details for the vicar;

The contact details for the flower-arranging committee;

A warning about the church being Smartwater protected;

The details of the next service;

The Parish newsletter;

A promotional feature about the good work that the church’s fundraising is doing in Africa;

A further promotional feature about the need to fundraise to stop the 12th-century tower falling off;

An invite for passers-by to enter God’s Home for a moment of contemplation and wider understanding;

An invite to the cake sale next Tuesday;

A long and detailed attack on a specialist and largely unimportant part of Church teachings that causes a major schism in the Church which will still be causing small wars, substantive differences of opinion and general controversy as to whether you were right five hundred years later.

The Torygraph is, perhaps optimistically, reporting that the European Union may be about to reorganise its stance on negotiating Brexit.

Broadly, and based on my understanding, negotiations since Article 50 was triggered in April have gone as follows:

Britain took the view that a contribution to the EU budget and ongoing costs was part of the final settlement and future relationship.

Whereas the EU took the view that the contribution to the EU budget and ongoing costs is part of past commitments and the final settlement is part of the future, so will be discussed in the future once the past has been straightened out.

So the Government decided to prove that the Prime Minister was about to be really really popular and win a huge Parliamentary majority for her negotiating position in a snap election, thus showing that Europe had to do what she wanted. Of course she then lost her overall majority, and made her Government look really not very brilliant by leaving a distinct air that the only reason she stayed in post was because nobody else in Parliament would be any better at the job. Evidently Tony Blair’s legacy to politics (not a career choice for anyone who knows how to make a difference, or do anything at all, with perhaps a couple of exceptions who are keeping their heads down) is ongoing.

Meanwhile the British position was compared to membership of a golf club, where members can resign their subscription and make no further contribution to the new clubhouse and revised green mowing arrangements (and play golf however they like).

Whereas the EU preferred the concept of a highly emotional and rancorous divorce, with alimony to be paid on an ongoing basis.

Britain made a very quiet and unspoken move towards the EU position that the divorce bill would be discussed first, followed (if the bill went well enough by, say, September 2017) by discussing the future relationship.

Britain then raised the suggestion of a transitional arrangement of some point for three years.

Whereas the EU began talking of a £100billion payout towards the hole left in the remainder of the 5-year budget (that Britain agreed to) as a result of Britain going.

It is the transitional arrangement which has become rather fun in all this. The transitional arrangement would of course involve paying the EU something, which obviously would most sensibly be what we would have paid anyway in exchange for most of the benefits of being inside plus most of the benefits of being outside. This would be a temporary semi-informal cake-and-eat-it scenario, with no immediate attractions for other members because a) it would largely be so they can have our money, and therefore unlikely to be repeated for Italy because the immediate cash savings following formal withdrawal would rather appeal to the EU; and b) after the three years we would be Out, without the benefits of being inside.

But if we’re going to pay what we would have paid anyway over those three years, we meet our commitments to the EU Budget and so there is no lump sum divorce bill.

This of course means the lump sum divorce bill is not relevant until it is decided there is no transitional period, but the transitional period is a technical affair that will lead from the In state to the Out state and the Out state has to be established before the transitional period can be properly considered. Thus the transitional period’s relevance doesn’t arise for some time, and the lump sum comes up when that has failed.

Perhaps more seriously, the lump sum has been progressively rising as the EU finds more and more costs that the UK will not be paying after April 2019. One major question which arises from this growing lump sum is whether the EU can afford the UK’s departure. Some months ago a bunch of Euro politicians were happily banging on about all the things they can do now the UK is off, overlooking that standing armies, worldwide diplomatic missions and proper integrated financial regulation are extremely expensive. If they are to be £100billion short of current spending in the 2020 Budget, the attitude should be towards retrenchment and lining up gigantic programme cuts that will make Tory austerity look like the insignificant fiddling of small but painful slashes that it is – not expansion of the Imperial power.

Britain meanwhile has been querying the lump sum and asking to see an itemised bill. From the response, it seems that people on the Continent are very honest. When you get your house rebuilt in, say, Belgium, it appears the builder will simply present you with a bill for €9000 and you simply sign the cheque, without asking the builder to point out what’s been done. In this country it would be called an excuse for embezzlement.

The problem for the EU is if at the end of September the view remains “No lump sum agreement by September = no deal”. Because if there is no deal, that includes no lump sum payment. By the end of this month, the EU would have committed to a position where in April 2019 we simply withdraw from the EU and begin the lengthy process of deporting the unattached EU citizens who, owing to the absence of a citizenship deal, no longer have any right of residence in the UK.

And the EU? Is, by its own maths, some £100billion out of pocket.

That’s not a good position for a bunch of supposedly brilliant negotiators to find themselves in – negotiating the other side into not paying you anything.

How you sell to your population that they are now £100billion poorer because you thought being paid by instalments over an extended period was an unacceptable compromise is an interesting question.

The solution is very simple – to forget the £100billion lump sum and focus on getting a transitional arrangement which will result in Britain paying that over a three-year period, very quietly and with obvious benefits to both sides. And, of course, with a recollection that this makes David Davis’s job much easier because he can go home and say “I got rid of that stupid bill today,” and after that can agree more or less any rubbish wanted.

It looks like some portions of the EU may be realising this. It would have helped of course if someone had suggested it more loudly at the outset.

The European Parliament building in Strasbourg, showing the immense interest displayed by the citizens of Europe in their unified democratic institution. (At least, the interest displayed on a Thursday afternoon in September.)

Mr Williamson is obviously not a rail-using MP, otherwise while out and about on the trains around his Derby North constituency he would have encountered a certain operational flaw in his idea called the Class 153:

The conversation in the adjacent vestibule petered out and the gentleman, seeking other entertainment, came through to find me leaning up against the coach end, leg cocked back against the bulkhead to take the weight off that foot, shoulder tucked into the corner against the door hinge and book in hand.“Hey captain,” he remarked, “what’re you reading?”I lifted the book for him to see the author and title across its pale green cover while I continued to read of Mr Elton’s enthusiasm for the emerging portrait of Miss Smith.His face changed.“What do you want to read that for?” he asked. “Is it for a college or university project?”I said it was funny; – he took a doubtful pull on his vape-stick; – I discreetly lowered the droplight and turned a page, reflecting that for the second time this year I had seemingly passed for somewhat younger than my actual years.He had come into my vestibule with two objectives; being proffered the unspoken suggestion that further vaping would be unpopular he would persist in the other of them, so while the air cleared I was obliged to abandon my perusal of Miss Austen’s Emma and engage in a discussion of her relative merits to Tolkein – a conversation that would have come much easier if I could ever have read any of his works.

– a recent rail journey with Emma, by Jane Austen (1814)

___…___

There are some five classic authors in English of sufficient stature over a sufficient duration to be regarded as the language’s classic fiction writers. They are Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens. To these may be added, sooner or later and depending on longevity across the next century or so, the names Agatha Christie, Joanne Rowling and Terry Pratchett. The eight give a pleasingly even male/ female split.

Of these it is Jane Austen, who died in Winchester 200 years ago today, that this essay covers. There is generally little argument with assertions that she was one of the English language’s foremost writers. In her regrettably brief lifetime she basked in pleasing anonymity, even to the degree that her publishers did not always know who was writing for them; it was only after her death (though not long after) that her brother Henry finally exposed her identity in a particularly sweet summary slightly at odds with the tone of her works and surviving letters. The tombstone in Winchester Cathedral that her siblings arranged for her – in that they procured both the stone and that she should be buried there – is much noted for completely omitting to note amongst its praise that the person beneath wrote anything at all.

Austen was an early beginner with her writings; this summary will take them broadly from the top.

Juvenalia
Three nicely-bound notebooks found their way into Jane’s possession in her younger years, into which she copied some of her youthful writings. There is nothing especially long in these writings; many are incomplete. Most are exceedingly funny. The below are a selection.

Frederic and Elfrida
This is dedicated to Miss Martha Lloyd for finishing Austen’s muslin cloak. It actually tells as much of the lovely Charlotte, who felt an obligation to oblige everyone – to the point of accepting two rather random offers of marriage within fifteen minutes. The resultant fall-out is described briefly and to the point, excepting a remark on Charlotte’s epitaph that “These sweet lines, as pathetic as beautiful as were never read by anyone who passed that way, without a shower of tears, which if they fail in exciting in you, Reader, your mind must be unworthy to peruse them.”

Austen would later improve her sentence structure a trifle.

When Frederic responds to Elfrida’s protestations of love and declarations that they should marry on the morrow with “you may marry tomorrow but I shan’t”, Elfrida ends up suffering from a series of fainting fits, where she barely has time to recover from one before falling into another. Fainting fits were obviously popular in late eighteenth-century literature, since they commonly arise in Austen’s rather satirical early works.

Love & Freindship
This is the story of Laura, told through a series of letters, of her travels around the country (starting in Usk, of all places). It is very silly in its own right, but has a definite air of the sort of send-up which benefits from knowing all the jokes.

Usk, from the castle site.

The first feature evidently intended as a joke is that, excepting Letter the First, the entire story is told from the perspective of Laura – and therefore might as well not be letters at all, excepting that they give Laura some sort of (apparently unreciprocated) reason for writing. What her within-novel audience makes of the story is never remarked upon. There is then the aside that Laura cannot return home because her family suddenly died somewhat previously, and until that point unnoticed by their daughter. Then we have Augustus and Sophia blushing at the idea of paying their debts (until Augustus is of course arrested, at which point Laura and Sophia “sighed and fainted on the Sofa”). Not to mention the abrupt reunion with a long-lost relative. And so on.

The short (though complete) tale seems unlikely to find its way onto the silver screen, not least because the title has been poached for the film adaptation of Lady Susan.

Lesley Castle
Again told through letters, this story is incomplete. It is named after the castle owned by the Lesley family, who provide the majority of the leading characters. This castle is located about two miles from Perth, high up on a rock. (Austen was probably not that familiar with the area, but there are several hills around the city which would suit. The most dramatic would of course be on the southern flanks of Birnam Wood, where the Highlands abruptly end along the Highland faultline a few miles to the north of Perth.)

But despite being Lesley Castle, the most memorable feature of the story is the character Charlotte Lutterell, who writes to both of the (mutually antagonistic) Lesleys and passes remarks on her sister’s wedding. She had just finished doing all the cooking for it when she was horrified to hear it had been called off – what is one to do with the food? A running joke ensues of the various people it has been fed to, and the need to persuade the tearful bride-that-was-to-have-been of the need to leave her bed for long enough to consume some of the cake.

Not the worst of matches for Lesley Castle, Rohallion Lodge lies amongst the trees of Birnam Wood, north of Perth. The wood is rather patchy, much of it having gone to Dunsinane in 1057.

The History of England
Pity the people obliged to grow up in the same house as an aspiring satirical author! James Austen had a nice copy of the four volumes of Oliver Goldsmith’s sensible, mainstream, Anglican History of England. One can picture his little sister expressing an interest in it and James letting her take it away for bedtime reading. Far from ensuring Jane came back properly informed on English history from a proper viewpoint, the volumes came back littered with marginalia taking a vehemently pro-Stuart, pro-Catholic agenda. Shortly afterwards this was followed by The History of England, by a Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant Historian. Jane had some opportunity to meet other historical viewpoints at the time, but the precise lines taken suggest there is either a desire to be highly perverse (in an Anglican rector’s daughter, too!) or an extremely sensitive nose to detecting biased rubbish – or both.

As well as Goldsmith, Jane also had access to Shakespeare’s plays, which inspire various comments about “it is to be supposed that Henry was married” (in the absence of any appearance in Henry IV by the King’s wife) and otherwise provide something else for her to twirl on its head.

It is impossible to draw out specific brilliant quotes from The History of England without simply quoting the whole thing – from its opening remark that Henry IV ascended the throne “much to his own satisfaction” via Richard III being a York and so a “very respectable man” through Henry VIII dissolving the monasteries to benefit the English landscape via a Sharade on James I that might be now considered a bit risque – “My first is what my second was to King James, and you tread on my whole” – culminating in the unanswerable argument that Charles I was an honourable man unsuited to be executed “because he was a Stuart.” (And remarks about James I allowing his mother’s death, when he was a year old). Footnotes in certain editions can be inclined to over-expand on the jokes.

The History is illustrated with miniatures by Jane’s sister Cassandra. These seem to be based on various members of the family. Their mother is the basis for a most unflattering image of Elizabeth I (which Queen the Prejudiced Historian is particularly cruel about). Alongside is a picture of a pretty young lady, with alert features, red cheeks and flowing blonde hair. The basis for this image of Mary Queen of Scots is reckoned to be Jane herself; one of just two pictures done during her lifetime, and the only one completed. Unfortunately it is also the one with much artistic licence.

Cassandra’s miniature of Mary Queen of Scots. Cassandra did all the History illustrations, apparently basing them largely on family members. Regrettably they are usually reproduced small and monochrome.

Two of the Austen siblings never sat for their portrait to be painted. One was George, who the family preferred to keep out of the way. The other was Jane, with the result that there is no professional picture of her drawn from life (the common portrait is a late Victorian creation). Cassandra did both portraits that we have of Jane. Aside from the “Mary” image, the other is a half-sketch of a figure with brown curly hair, sharp nose, folded arms and an air that she did not appreciate being used for drawing practice by her elder sister. As if to back up this assertion, the picture is primarily notable for being incomplete. Perhaps she never had the patience to sit for a professional artist either.

Its incomplete nature leaves the assumption that her clothing was never fully sketched out. As a result she seems to be wearing a T-shirt under an over-the-shoulder dress, combined with a bonnet of some kind. It is now resident at the National Portrait Gallery, which would no doubt please Cassandra on some level.

This sketch was done early enough to lack Jane’s spectacles, which were in the news in March 2017 due to considerations that she suffered from rheumatism, the “cure” for which was then to give the patient arsenic (which stops patients complaining about a lot of things), which in turn was suggested to be causing her to go blind. Also likely to have crippled her sight would have been sitting up in the evenings reading or writing by candlelight.

Lady Susan
Two Austen stories told through letters were finished and left in that state for Posterity; neither is very long. Love & Freindship was the first and this was the second. Neither was published in her lifetime. Love & Freindship appears in the Juvenalia; Lady Susan is usually published with The Watsons and Sanditon, which are both incomplete.

Lady Susan is a thoroughly amoral woman, who has created too much hot water for herself where she was living and has decided to abruptly move to stay with her in-laws in Hertfordshire. Her sister-in-law does not wish to see Lady Susan, and writes to her mother to say so. Meanwhile Lady Susan writes at length to her friend Mrs Johnson. This forms the basic frame for the story, which plays with the technique strikingly well – including letters chasing each other an hour apart with very different news.

This Correspondence, by a meeting between some of the Parties and a separation between the others, could not, to the great detriment of the Post office Revenue, be continued longer. So opens the final chapter of Lady Susan – a narrative tie-up which settles most things quite tidily. It also ends Austen’s sole attempt to give an amoral character a true starring role. Lady Susan Vernon is strikingly well-fleshed out. It is a pity that the sarky, off-the-wall attitudes of History of England were not combined with this unpleasant sort of character again. Austen instead now settled on her small parties of people in a rural setting. In some ways though that is the more interesting concept – the lively, humorous books with a reputation for not seeing anything very much happen, which has made them entertaining escapism for two hundred years. Writing an interesting three-volume novel where nothing happens requires a remarkable grasp of the human condition. Writing sarky stories about unpleasant people who get everyone else’s backs up is much easier – though Austen gives Lady Susan a certain sympathetic power that does take an artistic flourish, particularly for a rector’s daughter.

It was recently used as the basis for a fairly faithful film adaptation, curiously named Love & Friendship instead of Lady Susan, where it turned out the book was almost the perfect length for film purposes. There is therefore unusually little left out.

Northanger Abbey
This is Austen’s first completed full-length novel. By the author’s own account, it was completed in 1803 and sent to a publisher. The publisher bought it, advertised it and then did not publish it. Jane Austen remained puzzled as to why someone should think it worth buying a book they did not think it work publishing, but was unable to raise funds to buy it back until 1816. It does not appear to have been edited much before its postumous publication at the end of the following year, beyond renaming the leading character from Susan to Catherine and the book from Susan to Northanger Abbey. The author’s account is still published with the book, although whether it was set or published in 1803 or 1816 is now of more academic note.

The other five Jane Austen novels can be enjoyed as they stand and used as an entry-point to the fashions and attitudes of the time. Northanger may be readable on this basis, but some degree of background is handy. At the very least one of the cited Ann Radcliffe novels should be read before picking up Northanger to get a grasp of Catherine’s attitudes and interpretations during the latter parts of the book (Romance of the Forest is good for this, Mysteries of Udolpho is also featured at length). There is other background study that can be carried out by people who wish to understand every joke going.

Northanger Abbey is especially notable – indeed, practically unique – for the moment when Jane discards the narrative, throws the characters aside mid-chapter, breaks the fourth wall and has a two-page rant direct to the reader about popular attitudes to the concept of novels. One is left to wonder how much, between writing the book in 1803 and its publication in 1817, she had contributed towards making this rant obsolete. One should also bear in mind that the tale is a joke about what happens to people who read too many books, particularly horrors or romances.

This sequence in particular, but the book as a whole and in general, benefits from being read aloud. This was how the stories were originally run past the Austen family. Reading at night by a flickering candle for the evening scenes in Northanger Abbey adds something to the proceedings as well. The Abbey does not appear until well into the second half of the book, by which point the story’s title is easily forgotten.

Catherine is horribly and uncomfortably relatable; the friends who wish to carry her along in their wild (and occasionally truncated) trips to Clifton give a certain tinge to the story as she tries to get in with Henry Tilney. A notable social feature is seen in both Northanger with Catherine and the Tilneys and later with Jane Bennet and the Bingleys in Pride & Prejudice; the girl might love the boy, and might really want to see the family primarily for the boy, but her “dear friend” whom she is invited to things by and is closely associated with (and through whom she gets to spend time with the boy on the side) is actually the boy’s sister.

Perhaps nothing happens in the way of alien invasions, or zombie apocalypses, or kidnappings on the streets of Bath – or Catherine being nearly murdered by General Tilney as she has grounds to expect after reading too much Gothic horror – but the book contains plenty of human incident, suspense and charm to carry the reader. Central Bath has not changed much since the story was written and the story can therefore be followed on the ground – something which Bath likes to play on. The other novels – Persuasion excepted – feature a greater degree of fictional locations which leaves more imagination to the reader.

The view from the hills above Bath, overlooking the meadows at Bathampton, easily traipsed across thinking of Henry Tilney lapsing from politics to silence.

Sense & Sensibility
For the person not overly familiar with early 19th-century literature it can be tempting to assume that many books of the era – or at least most Jane Austen books – have titles in this “Something & Something” style. It is an assumption much encouraged by the television series Blackadder the Third, for which the episodes are all titled in this style (“Dish & Dishonesty”, “Dual and Duality” and so forth). Further thought will generate only two books in this category – Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice.

Sense is Austen’s final coming of age – or the beginning of the production run of books – or however you wish to look at it. There is note in letters that she had previously written a manuscript called Elinor & Marianne, told through a series of letters like Lady Susan. This does not survive, but the matching character names suggest that it was reworked into Sense & Sensibility. The original title remains in one form; Elinor is the Sense and Marianne is the Sensibility.

With Austen now providing the narrator’s voice, the reader gets to enjoy her humour in a way that does not come across so much in Lady Susan. When Robert Ferrars is going on about the benefit of cottages, throwing plans of perfectly respectably houses on the fire along the way, Elinor can be remarked as deciding not to object because she does not feel his arguments deserve the compliment of rational opposition.

The suggestion of “not much happening” in Austen’s works seems rather inappropriate in Sense. A great deal goes up and down, including Marianne’s state of health – from youthful ideology and enthusiasm to the verge of an early grave. Elinor has barely an easier time of it, with the plot being bustled along by the machinations of Lucy Steele. A “handbags at dawn” scene would be out of place in an Austen novel, but there is no lost love between some of the characters. At the same time, after finishing the lively and amusing tale it can be rather hard to think of much that actually happens, except for the striking moment of Lucy Steele leaning out of the coach in Exeter, the ghastly moment when Marianne finally meets Willoughby in London (a man almost worse than Pride‘s Wickham) and the brilliant sequence early in the book where Mrs Dashwood talks her husband out of making any provision for his family at all, apart from something along the lines of a bit of crockery.

Both Elinor and Marianne can be tiresome at times; Elinor takes much delight in her level-headedness and Marianne spends much time in her bedroom sobbing. But Marianne also makes many remarks that polite society greatly deserved and her depression (and distraction) at Willoughby’s slow start in London is highly relatable. Where Love & Freindship is deeply scathing of the cult of sensibility, here it gets a more human and developed face.

Pride & Prejudice
“By the Author of Emma” announced one trailer for the 2005 cinema adaptation of this novel. One almost wonders who needs drawing into Pride & Prejudice by announcing the list of stuff that its author also wrote. The early 20th Century featured a view that the two periods of Austen’s writing each produced one classic. Readers can argue the toss between Mansfield Park and Emma for the second period. For the first, it is Pride & Prejudice. It has a reputation as one of the great works of English literature and a lightness of touch to its storytelling that completely belies any such concept. Classics are not supposed to be this much fun to read.

Originally it went by the title of First Impressions, and it was under this name when Jane Austen’s father submitted it to a London publisher called Thomas Cadell. He was a notable and honourable publisher who handled many great books. But his major claim to fame nowadays is that he rejected Pride & Prejudice.

He rejected it practically by return of post, so even if the line was there by then he probably did not peruse Austen’s remark that “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

And we’re off. Jane has written a namesake into this novel, though how much resemblance Jane Bennet bears to Jane Austen is quite another matter. Jane Bennet is the eldest of five daughters. Headstrong Lydia is the youngest; Catherine, or Kitty, is older than Lydia but nonetheless led on by her; Mary, in the middle, is a rather flat character that Austen justifies on the basis that she was a flat and characterless sort of person. And then there is Lizzie – the lively figure who walks across muddy fields to see her sister convalesing at the Hall and who develops a rapid prejudice against Mr Darcy.

Mr Darcy kindly reciprocates by showing too much pride to express interest in a girl who has a family like Lizzie’s.

There are three major points in their relationship – the outcome of which is perhaps inevitable, but that merely allows us to enjoy getting there. The first is the chapter of Lizzie reading Darcy’s letter; a long epistle that allows both her and the reader to see things from his point of view for a change. (While not first-person, the tale is Lizzie’s.) The second is the meeting at Pemberley – inadvertent, awkward and an opportunity to refresh opinions. Then towards the end of the book we have a beautiful chapter with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, where her Ladyship – backed up by the fawning Mr Collins, by post – proves to Lizzie that Darcy is still interested in her, and proves to Darcy when ranting on the conversation later that Lizzie would like to reciprocate. But the chapter itself is hilarious. Even if the rest of the book was terrible, it would be worth reading for that moment.

But it isn’t terrible. All jostles neatly together for a neat fairytale ending to an adult fairytale. A slight revision on Oscar Wilde’s definition of fiction, for the good end happily and the bad reformed.

For those who dislike Jane Austen, Pride is the ultimate symbol of her vacuity. For those who like her, it is often (though not always) the favourite. A strange range of people can be found showing enthusiasm for the book, up to the current prime minister. Much as the closest she might come to any of the characters is Lady Catherine – the supposedly-powerful woman who marches around knocking heads together, and whom it is terribly satisfying to deflate and ignore.

The Watsons
After finishing Susan, Elinor & Marianne and First Impressions Austen settled down to this little tale. Elements of it appear in the next three books here and there – mostly Mansfield Park – but it in itself remains nine-tenths incomplete. It is known where it was to go, but it never gets very near and its limited draft form awaiting fleshing-out gives relatively few indications of how it was to get to its destination. This is a pity, as The Watsons is a promising tale slightly out of the usual oeuvre of the author.

The heroine, Emma Watson, is freshly returned to her rather poverty-stricken family home after many years being brought up by a wealthy aunt and uncle (the concept of such wealthy relations taking on a fortunate child being present in Austen’s life and one that would be recycled in Mansfield Park). Her father is gravely unwell and usually trapped at home (which concept would be modified and recycled in Emma, along with the heroine’s forename and initials). She attracts a steadily-growing level of interest from several quarters, not all of them satisfactory. The next stage was to be the death of the father, scattering his family.

Sometime around when Austen was working up to this point in the book her father died. This had two impacts – writing about the death of a father was rather more personal, and the remains of his family were now touring the South of England looking for a home. The Watsons survives as part of Austen’s mass of manuscripts, but was never to be resumed.

Mansfield Park
For some years Austen was merely the author of three novels; one theoretically out for publication and the other two carefully carried from place to place as she, her mother and her sister looked for somewhere to settle down. With Sense and Pride thriving in the then-limited book market, Mansfield Park was the first of her second tranche of novels and the first written at her new home in Chawton (just outside Alton, Hampshire).

It divides opinion. There are people who sing its praises; people who will observe what a marvellous contrast it makes with Pride & Prejudice; people who will happy teach it as an introduction to Jane Austen. And then there are the people who will remark “it’s about the house of course”, people who will delicately observe on how none of the characters are very likeable and people who will leave it quietly nestling on the bookshelf.

The story goes through the upbringing of Fanny Price with her aunt’s family (her mother married inadvisedly and without this generosity Fanny has no prospects worth speaking of). It is a tale of things that happen to and around Fanny; she doesn’t manage to influence a great deal herself, although she periodically refuses to marry people.

From a point of view of social commentary – Sir Thomas’s views on slavery, Edmund’s explanation of the clergy, an enthusiasm amongst the idle gentry for putting on plays for their own amusement (James Austen liked doing this; sometimes one feels that his outlook on life could come off better in his sister’s novels) and the need for Fanny to be adopted by her aunt if she is to make any progress in life – it is a very worthy book. As an evening read it may end up being taken slowly. Readers who came into Austen via Mansfield and didn’t like it much are advised to pick up one of the others for luck (but readers who came into Austen via Mansfield and loved every page are reassured that this does not necessarily mean they won’t like the others).

Perhaps the problem is that it is too biting – too much of a social commentary, and therefore of course the perfect book for English students because it is more than just a book. To take one example, it features a long and splendid study of a modern corporate board meeting under the cover of deciding which play to perform.

Portsmouth, home of Fanny’s family and where she spends relatively little of her life.

Mansfield Park business estate at Four Marks, Hampshire.

Emma
After years of writing mock dedications in her juvenalia, Austen was finally obliged to write a genuine one. George, the Prince Regent, had acquired one of her novels and rather enjoyed it. Very heavy hints duly descended on Austen from the highest in the land that she might care to dedicate her next book to him.

Unfortunately Jane did not care for the Prince Regent that much, but a heavy hint from his Office is an instruction to be obeyed and so the book carries, to this day, an appropriately flowery dedication.

The title, at four characters, is one of the shortest in English literature. With the renaming of Susan to Northanger Abbey, it is the only one of her full-length novels named after its main character. Emma is a woman that Austen predicted “no-one but myself will much like”. She is one of the most human main characters in literature. There are no grand heroics and no great speeches of pride and pleasure. The long letters of Pride & Prejudice are missing, as is the usual involvement with London and travel far away. This is the definitive book for Austen’s self-defined concept of a few people in a village. It merely gives us the sight of Emma repeatedly, with great self-confidence and aplomb, lovably putting her foot in it on every possible occasion. She offends half the village; guides a girl with nobody else to turn to away from a mutually agreeable marriage; organises a great many things in the knowledge that she knows best and finally has to face the prospect of someone marrying the wrong person.

The happy ending comes suddenly, with a fair chunk of book still to go. For Emma still has her father to keep happy, her friend to apologise to and the vicar’s wife to watch being annoyed. This extension makes the book nicely rounded off – even more so than the final chapter of tidying in the first three novels – and gives a sense of how the book is more about Emma’s coming of age and awareness than it is about her romance (such as it is). It is certainly a happier ending than it could be said she deserves.

Numerous parellels can be drawn to Pride & Prejudice, particularly if the books are read consecutively. The treatment of the clergy is similar on both counts, although comparisons of the wives suggests Mr Collins is blessed with much better sense than Mr Elton (who can perhaps most reasonably be suggested as having been on a rebound at the time). The leading lady is intelligent, feisty and not wholly given to the concept of matrimony for herself. But Pride has the awful Mrs Bennet to hold the plot from sliding forward too fast. Emma’s mother is long dead and Emma is established as a good catch; her father’s hypochondria is a theme that would have appeared extensively in Sanditon had the author lived long enough to complete it. One is left to wonder how much this was based on Austen’s own mother. Emma also contains another Jane, in the form of Miss Fairfax, who has her own little subplots tangled in with Emma’s affairs.

The rather intermittant appearances of the piano after its sudden arrival – and the extensive typically Austen-esque discussion and speculation that follows said arrival – inspired a sequence in Jasper Fforde’s First Among Sequels where one of the characters redirects a piano into the previously piano-less Emma and it promptly gets itself wedged into the plot. (The sequence is worth remarking upon, but hard to explain. Go and read First Among Sequels for details; it also features a dastardly attempt on the plot of Pride & Prejudice.)

It is a notable feature of the works of this rector’s daughter that her characters rarely go to church. There is an explicit scene in Northanger and references in Pride while Lizzie is staying with Charlotte. In Emma, the one obvious church reference is when Emma does not go to the Christmas service because of the snow. Did Austen not trust herself to take it seriously? – was it too boring? – not an opportunity for character displays? – simply too routine, like remarking on the characters breathing, and hard to work into a plot? – we presume she went herself. Nowadays it gives the agnostic portion of the audience less to distance the books from their own lives. There are a few strange chance features like this which give the books an unthinkingly current feel, leaving aside as read the lack of motor-vehicles, internet and Game of Thrones or Doctor Who speculation. Similarly Charlotte Bronte wrote of characters who would stand on the terrace with a cigar, but none of Austen’s characters smoke.

Film versions of Emma have the problem that on paper the reader can mentally tone Emma’s conduct to their own choosing – innocent, humorous, misjudged calculation. On screen there is no such flex. She stands before the audience, bending matters to what she thinks is her will. She is much more likeable on paper, and it is perhaps best to leave her there.

Persuasion
The last and shortest completed Austen novel was published with Northanger Abbey shortly after her death. It is split neatly into two parts, both focused on its heroine Anne Elliot. The first has her in Somerset, with a brief visit to Lyme Regis. The second places her firmly in Bath, and so Austen’s storytelling ends where it began.

Much of the plot is in its backstory. Anne was once engaged to the young Captain Wentworth. She was persuaded to break it off by her surrogate mother Lady Russell and, having fulfilled her duty, has been regretting it ever since. Now Captain Wentworth is returning to find Anne, now twenty-seven and generally viewed as past her prime, resigned to spinsterhood and yet with an air that if she dared hope so much she would still be waiting for him.

But she has to watch as he becomes a favourite with everyone else, while she is cautious about admitting to herself that she might still love him.

The conclusion is sudden and, as ever, beautifully played. If the book was intended to be fattened up later, this could not have included the conclusion. Its whole raison d’etre is its sudden explosion upon Anne, leaving the rest of the story to find its feet again in the sudden aftermath.

Persuasion in some ways has a certain grey air, perhaps simply reflecting the tale being played out over winter (a contrast to Emma starting in autumn and running through the following twelve months). There is also the element that Anne, being 27 and all, is doomed to a life alone. It brightens considerably in the final chapter.

From a construction point of view, the character of Mrs Smith in the “Bath” portion is useful for both developing Anne’s character and showing what a dedicated woman she is to former friends and planned appointments (shades of Catherine) but the chapter where they discuss Mr Elliot is, dramatic as it may be, rather too much of a plot dump.

A minor point of note is that Austen has inconsiderately called two characters in this story “Charles”. One is hoping to marry the sister of the other. They are therefore frequently mentioned in the same scene. Readers must be prepared for this to be mildly confusing.

Bath in January. For all its old yellow stones, fairly consistent architecture and surviving Pump Rooms, the place has still managed to see some changes since Austen’s day.

Sanditon
Having brought Persuasion to some degree of completion, perhaps with ideas of going back later to fatten it up and smooth the odd point, Austen lost little time in getting going on the next book. This tale centres on the development of a new seaside community near Eastbourne, and in particular on its developers.

After six books on the idle rich – the landed gentry, of various degrees of wealth, whose status precludes them engaging in trade but whose land management no longer occupies all their time – we twirl to the things these people can do to keep themselves occupied when not playing cards, learning the piano or tilting at Pemberley. They can establish seaside resorts; – they can read more than they understand; – they can organise the lives of people that they have never met at considerable expense to themselves; – or they can pretend to be ill, spending their time in the fresh sea air closeted beside a fire with the windows closed. The only sensible characters to emerge in the early pages are Sidney Parker, who we barely meet; Clara Brereton, whose uncertain liaison only has the briefest chance to be remarked on; and the heroine.

A touch of the Juvenalia crops up with comments of the local men going out of their way in the hope of seeing the Miss Beauforts standing in their window. The humour generally has an extra spike over previous published works and there is little sign of the heroine’s love interest, though perhaps Sidney Parker would have developed into this role. It has a very definite air of being the doyenne of a further trio of books, distinct from the Mansfield/ Emma/ Persuasion batch.

Yet it has the tragic element that we are only just introduced to Lady Denham’s house when a page turn reveals a blank sheet of paper. Sanditon is unfinished, and revels in the relatively rare status of a book not abandoned for boredom, writer’s block or changing circumstances. Perhaps its commentary on uninformed literary criticism makes a good point at which to begin drawing this summary to a close.

We are left to wonder if perhaps part of the hypochondriac element of Sanditon is based on Austen laughing at herself for her developing physical weakness, decaying eyesight and blotching skin. Unlike the Sanditon brigade, who are written as being willing contributors to their physician’s pension fund, there was actually something seriously wrong with Jane. The pen had to be laid down in March 1817 and she travelled from Chawton “over the Alps” along what is now the A31 to Winchester for medical treatment. There she died, just round the corner from the cathedral, on the 18th of July 1817. She was forty-one years old.

Out of her and the three Bronte sisters – the great early-19th-century female novellists – she was the longest-lived. That by the standards of her career choice she was a ripe old woman of 41 says something, though what is quite another matter.

The last residence of Jane Austen – a stolid house just round the corner from the cathedral. Still a private property, and no doubt a slightly odd one to spend time in with the tourists stopping outside.

Winchester Cathedral – a very old, grand structure, also the resting place of several bits of King William II.

After
Her brother Henry, having acted as her manager for some years, was instrumental in getting her buried in Winchester Cathedral, in arranging the tombstone that ignores her writing career and in driving the publication of Northanger and Persuasion. This remained her published output for some time.

Her papers and possessions ended up in the hands of various nieces and nephews. A biography followed, renewing interest and helping to cement her status, as did the unfortunate burning of rather a lot of her letters. It is perhaps a surprise that her unpublished manuscripts were not lost as well; certainly there was some question as to whether the appearance of, say, Lady Susan before the public eye would cheapen the reputation of the others.

Cassandra’s portrait of her sister plus her draft of a rarely-seen rear view of Jane sat on a Hampshire bank were used as the very loose basis for a Victorian portrait. Jane is shown as a demure, tidily-dressed figure in blue with pen and book to hand as indicators of her profession. There is perhaps something in the eyes and the straight Austen nose of the original picture. There is a slightly different version without the raised eyebrows, looking especially demure. The two have been combined into the attractive girl on the new £10 banknote. The blue-dress portrait completes the family’s official portrayal of her as an innocent, lovable figure who wrote delicate Victorian romance. And who happened to make rude comments about hypochondriacs, officious rectors and Britain’s brave boys – and whose Juvenalia includes a girl who spent a day stealing ices and refusing to pay for cabs.

Perhaps it was the publication of the bumpf that she tossed off in her youth, as fresh and lively as could be wished, which cemented her status. But despite its content she has now achieved the status of an establishment author who is forcibly taught to schoolchildren. There is a general body of thought that this is not the best way to introduce her to the next generation of readers, by forcing them to look at the social positions of Bingley and Jane rather than letting them laugh at the jokes and hope that, despite the fairly obvious social divide and the ambitions of Miss Bingley for a better connection than the near-penniless Jane Bennet, there will nonetheless be a happy union at some point in the next three- or four-hundred pages.

Failing such arguments swaying the National Curriculum, it is as good a ground as any for not doing an English A-level. It does not take much effort to find the names of the great authors around the place a few years later in life, and it takes particularly little effort for someone to come to Austen in their own time, courtesy perhaps of a pink-covered copy of Pride and Prejudice left for some reason in an office “please wander off with” corner…

This is a simple and attractive walk, mixing level walking, uphill and downhill sections, woods, industrial ruins and coastal views before ending up pottering through suburban St Austell.

It is also particularly a “trail by the rails”. It is never much more than half a mile from a railway.

___…___

Luxulyan station, the first stop on the Newquay branch since the closure of the station at St Blazey, is a neat little affair. It consists of a half-overgrown platform set on the central Cornish plateau slightly down the hill from Luxulyan itself. Its one and pretty much only claim to fame came in 1991, when the shortest-ever High Speed Train formation to run in passenger service terminated here after a somewhat unscheduled journey from the other end of Luxulyan Tunnel. The power car at the other end of the train had derailed in an isolated location and this was the simplest way of ferrying the handful of customers back to somewhere with road access. Luxulyan remains proud of this sight.

The powercar involved has spent the ensuing years making other appearances in the media, including as the last powercar in British Rail’s Intercity livery, as the star feature (under a faked “43001” number) at a First Great Western relaunch and as the rear powercar in the Ufton Nervet incident, which gives her the dubious status of being the last UK rail vehicle to be returned to traffic after being involved in a fatal accident.

But to return to Luxulyan.

On leaving the station and meeting the road, turn left up into the village and right at the top of the hill.

It is possible to do the first leg of the walk off-road (look at the OS map for details), but it is usually extremely muddy and involves disturbing the peaceful repose of several engaging native species of bramble, so instead follow the road down the hill out of the village and turn right at the bottom by Gatty’s Bridge. Follow the back lane into the valley for about half a mile, then take the left onto the lane heading sharply up the hillside. Take the second footpath to the right and follow this as it makes a level heading along the hillside.

The first footpath offers similarly good views and a similarly level walk through the same peaceful woods, but the second path leads to Treffry’s Viaduct and is therefore worth the extra little pull. It is a twin-level viaduct, with a stream on the lower level and the course of the old tramroad on the top. A curious irony of this particular railway is that it replaced a tramroad that was better engineered than the railway.

The viaduct is built of solid granite and very, very impressive. Through the gaps between the blocks that make up the deck can be seen the stream flowing along its lower level. Underneath the arches, swinging around endless sharp curves at a pleasingly low speed, is the replacement railway. It is unlikely that there will actually be a train to be seen here, given the branch’s service level. At the western end the tramway heads into a sheer-sided cutting through the granite, complete with stream, on its way back to Luxulyan.

Having admired the viaduct, return to the eastern side of the valley and continue walking away from Luxulyan along this high-level path, now accompanied by a stream and rather a lot of evidence that this used to be an upmarket tramway. This evidence includes most of the granite sleepers and several lengths of rail.

After two-thirds of a mile or so this opportunity for pleasant reverie, ambling along through the woods beside the silently bubbling stream, is brought to a rather abrupt end. The stream ceases to be peacefully bubbling and instead forms a waterfall off the end of a chute that drops it over an absent waterwheel. The tramway meanwhile takes up the course of a long-abandoned rope-worked incline, the winding house for which has tumbled down and returned to nature. (Or had its nicely-hewn granite building blocks recycled by environmentally-conscious locals, as the case may be.)

Follow the incline downhill, across the lower path (which returns to Luxulyan to the right and dead-ends at a gate to the left) and on beneath an unusual skew bridge to the bottom of the valley, where it emerges next to and slightly below the current railway.

Follow the path as it swings around the end of the hill and across a car park to the point where the tramway turns into railway. Until the early ’90s there was a china clay drying facility here, lightly served by this upgraded stub of the tramway route branching off the Newquay line. Now the stub is much overgrown and the path runs alongside as the rails rise to join the working railway.

The path dips and goes through a very small adit to pick up the hill side of the railway. It then runs alongside, separated from the running line by a stream, down to St Blazey.

There is nothing very notable about St Blazey as a place – the housing is fairly typical housing and the railway doesn’t get up to as much as it used to – but the stream runs through it in a green corridor so there is not too much need to attend to it. The first road is the A390 from Lostwitheil, Liskeard and Saltash, which crosses the railway on the level. Next to the crossing is the crossing keeper’s house, sandwiched between railway and stream and in private hands.

The path is now neatly gravelled as it runs down a fairly straight leg to the second level crossing. Here it is necessary to cross the railway, as on this side of the line the onward path plunges straight into St Blazey’s semi-moribund marshalling yard.

Having crossed the railway, turn right (the first right, separated from the railway by a scrap of fence) and continue alongside a second stream that turns out to have been hiding on the other side of the railway (the railway losing no time in crossing the first stream, diving into the marshalling yard and vanishing behind a hedge). Follow this second stream down past the back of a wooded park. About halfway down the railway is crossed on the level as it curves sharply out of St Blazey yard and twirls up a 150-degree-or-so bend towards Par station. Continue to the end of this leg of the stream, where the path turns into a couple of dusty yards and a back alley before joining the A3082 to Fowey.

From here Par station is a left turn to pass under the railway and then another left turn on the other side to follow a gulley to the station forecourt. To continue to St Austell, turn right here instead and pass over the level crossing conveying the St Blazey Harbour branch (and former line to Fowey) across the A3082. This one retains not only its crossing keeper’s house but also a handsome set of classic crossing gates.

Once over the railway, turn left and pass beneath the mainline on its low stone viaduct. The road promptly swings round to the right and a short, disagreeable bit of pavement-walking ensues, trapped between harbour boundary wall to the left, road to the right and Cornwall Mainline above.

After the harbour gateway the road dips to pass under the railway and the footpath diverges, running between railway and harbour before turning left to pass through the tail end of the harbour and clay dries complex.

The path runs down to the seashore and turns right, following the cliffs and a sign marked “South West Coast Path” along the edge of a golf course. This offers some rather good views back towards Gribbin Head:

On winter afternoons the sun also shimmers quite handsomely across the passing trains as they sweep round the curves on the climb towards St Austell:

Less pleasing were the views of the abandoned Coliseum on the beach at Carylon Bay. These ruins have now gone, thereby mildly improving the view.

Swing across the car park, sticking close to the cliffs, and rise around the coast side of the Carlyon Bay luxury hotel. The coast path runs across a grassy area and tries to avoid a spate of suburbia by going around the cliff side of several back gardens. These attempts are almost successful, though a brief stint on Sea Road admiring the houses is necessary.

But Sea Road is private, so no time is lost dropping off it again and running round the back of some more houses before falling down the hillside to Charlestown’s little harbour. Slightly unexpectedly, this will usually be occupied by a classic ship or two.

Work around the docks and pick up the main road towards St Austell, leading directly up the hill from the left-hand dock. This is long, fairly straight and steadily climbing in a way that, for all of the mixed architecture, has been a bore for a bit when it finally passes the Penrice Academy and hits the A390 on the fringes of suburban St Austell.

Pass straight across the roundabout and follow the pavement into town. This is a classic Cornish suburban road which, apart from the car designs and traffic levels, has not changed much in forty or fifty years. The telegraph lines have a pleasingly cluttered air. At the bottom of a dip a slightly staggered crossroads is handled by a pair of mini-roundabouts, where Victoria Road emerges as Alexandra Road.

Alexandra Road is followed for barely a quarter of a mile up the hill to a discreet, carefully-signposted gulley off to the right. This leads up between a couple of garden walls to the railway and then follows the same to a footbridge over the three tracks of the mainline. The overgrown third line, swinging sharply away to a buffer stop, is the former access to St Austell’s goods yard. Cross the bridge and continue along the path, now on the other side of the railway but still following it with much the same dedication, to the road.

The railway station is straight ahead; trains to Par and Plymouth are down the road ahead and across the old yard, while trains to Truro and Plymouth are better reached by crossing the railway by the road bridge and running down the pavement to the station forecourt. The forecourt is strikingly built-up on the steep hillside above the town and provides a rare bit of level open space for the bus station.

Long a beautifully-preserved harmonious mid-19th-century/ early-20th-century wayside mainline timber station, St Austell has been not wholly sympathetically renovated in the 21st century. In 1999 the Down platform building was flattened and replaced by a building that in other circumstances might have seemed modern and vibrant instead of severely out of keeping – such as if the opportunity had been taken to remove the subsequently-derelict Up platform building (replacing it with something that matched the new Down building) and the old signalbox (closed 1980, which looked in keeping with the old station and now doesn’t). A new footbridge, appearing high enough to be future-proofed for electrification west of Plymouth (stop laughing), took so long to appear that styles have moved on so it doesn’t really match the new building.

On the other hand, the station is still here and is moderately looked after.

This is a pleasantly rambling sort of walk which done in this direction has a predominantly downhill orientation. If done in reverse, it is more inclined to have an uphill feel about it.

Travellers coming from the west (Alresford and Ropley) are advised to check their return train carefully before leaving the Mid-Hants station at Medstead & Four Marks.

___…___

To say Medstead & Four Marks is a rather well-preserved sort of station is rather like saying the late Wolfgang Mozart’s music is rather pleasant to listen to. A comparison with some “past” photos on display in the station eventually reaches the note that remarks the signal box cabin had to be replaced after the original was demolished. This fits in very well, and otherwise it looks much as ever.

Medstead is the old community which thoughtlessly was founded some distance from the route of the railway. Four Marks, which mostly consists of mid-20th century houses, later grew up around the station. There is a certain air to the architecture of a place which stopped expanding when the station closed with the withdrawal of trains between Alton and Winchester in 1973.

Head out of the station using the footpath off the Alresford-bound platform and work through the back alleys (right, left, right, left, right, straight across) to the main road, emerging opposite the Chinese takeaway, which is next door to Tesco and just up the road from the chippie. Cross the road (the A31 to Winchester) and turn left up the hill.

At the top, just before the turning to Medstead, turn right down the gully and follow it through the housing estates until it skirts into open country and drops onto a road consisting of suburban villas. Cross this road and take the signposted path on the other side into the woods.

Proceed down this path, which goes on for quite some distance along the edge of the wood. Eventually the path opens out into fields with attractive views off to the east.

These are the fields of the rather wonderfully-named Pies Farm and, unfortunately, are actually after the required turnoff. Go back into the wood and take the right turn (left from the Four Marks direction) and continue along a different edge of the wood. From here the walk follows St Swithun’s Way to Chawton, but this is not overly well-signposted so the fact is not much use. Make do with enjoying the gentle falling gradient through the dappled light beneath the deciduous trees to the pungent scent of the pines off to the left. Eventually the path emerges again, this time at Upper Woodside Farm.

Follow the road as it swings down the hill and over a little ridge until it reaches a hedge and takes a right-angle to the right. Take the left turn down a track along the side of a field, avoiding the bollard provided to discourage vehicular access. (This bollard is made out of a bit of old tree and makes a very strong and stable base for resting the rucksack while taking a drink, with the added benefit that it can be moved around as circumstances require – though the farmer would no doubt appreciate it finishing up where it started.)

Follow this track as it goes halfway up the field and then turns right across another field. At the cross-tracks by the barns turn left and up a new track which rises gently through the copse on a slight embankment, curving gently to the right. This is the former Alton to Fareham railway. An overbridge at Southfield Farm highlights the route’s former use.

After the bridge the railway alignment abruptly ends where it has been ploughed back into the fields. After the first field the footpath turns right, drops down to a wood, goes through the wood, turns right down another field boundary and comes out on the A32 Alton to Fareham road.

Cross the road (obviously quiet as there is no need for the railway) and go up the path on the other side. This works alongside a field and into a cul-de-sac. At the end of the cul-de-sac, turn left.

This is the old route of the Alton to Fareham road, which proceeds northwards for a couple of hundred yards past cricket fields and cottages to the village green and a road junction with the old road to Winchester. On the right are two pubs next door to each other (“Cassandra’s Cup” and “The Greyfriar”). On the left is a large brick house, formerly part of the local landlord’s estate. In the early 19th-century the then-landlord let his widowed mother, his two sisters and their friend use it as a home rent-free. Thus it was that here, overlooking the junction between the two main roads from London to the various parts of Hampshire, several key ports and the Isle of Wight, the novelist Jane Austen revised two novels, wrote three-and-a-bit more and became a good-selling writer.

Before her publisher started putting her name on the title page (instead of attributing the latest work to “The Author of Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, &c.”) she inconveniently succumbed to a severe bout of ill-health and died at the age of 41, leaving the world a mere six satirical novels (as opposed to, say, a rather more desirable ten or twelve) plus a splendid collection of juvenalia, fragments and Lady Susan. The house is now a museum and Chawton has been firmly bypassed; the upshot is that the room interiors and the traffic levels outside are both much as Austen would have known them.

The option exists of dropping in on the museum for a couple of hours idle perusing. Otherwise carry on past the pubs and a couple of cottages beyond and take the footpath down the gully off to the right. Cross the following field next to the hump of an old wall, leaving the spinney to the left. Head through the gate on the other side, climb up through the copse and go through the gate into the field. Follow the signposts, the path through the grass and the shortest route to the next stile or gate. Austen fans can imagine her taking her afternoon walks with her sister Cassandra along this way.

After some little while the path comes to Whitehouse Farm and heads north up the access road to the B3006. Cross the road with due care and head through the hedge on the other side. The path emerges onto two tracks, separated by a fence, both heading in the correct sort of direction and neither obviously signposted as the right of way.

It appears the further path is the correct one, leading up to the farm buildings, running around the western and northern edges of the complex and then following the hedge eastwards on the far side down a designated double-fenced alley. The nearer path goes around much the same sort of route, passes through a builders yard and then picks up the correct side of the eastward hedge – via several wire fences. At the end of the eastward hedge the two options come together (with no signposting as to which side is preferred by the landowner). Head for a footbridge which carries the path over the stream into a nettle bed. On the other side is a minor road. Join it and turn left. (It is sorely tempting to follow the bank of the stream for a dozen yards until it passes under the road and pick up the lane there instead.)

This is a very pleasant lane to follow for maybe a third of a mile until it comes to a sort of crossroads after a gate. Take the bridlepath (Water Lane) to the left towards Alton. This leads to the Alton bypass, which turns out to have been very cheaply built in 1970; the dual carriageway (with central reservation but no crashbarrier) passes above Water Lane but has to be crossed on the level. Visibility is reasonable. This is not an unusual state of affairs on British trunk roads; users are urged not to bring the fitness levels of British walkers into disrepute (or, indeed, bring the fine reputation of British road safety into disrepute and infer that truncating the duplicate railway might have been short-sighted) by carrying out experiments into whether cars react to people using public rights of way and generally contributing to the business case for a subway.

As can be not-quite-seen in the picture, continuing along the lane will come to a bridge carrying a minor road under the bypass for those who prefer to chance narrow back lanes against sweeping bypasses.

Once past the bypass, clamber straight up the following hill into Alton’s outer suburbs. Drop gently down the other side, looking first for a turning in from the left (as a reference point) and then a discreet gully with a “No cycling” sign off to the right. It is maybe two hundred yards before the continuing road crosses the railway back to Medstead. Follow this gully, turning left at the end down a further gully and dropping down the escarpment via a flight of steps to Lower Turk Street.

Cross Lower Turk Street and follow the path alongside the railway embankment. This comes alongside King’s Pond, which in some sort of Spirit has been allowed to be largely separated from the path by a bank of trees. At the occasional breaks are warnings not to feed bread to the ducks. The locals get around this by giving them digestive biscuits instead. One feels this is a severe case of loopholery.

Head out of the park at the other end of the lake into Waterside Court complex, turning right and then left to gain the main road adjacent to a gold postbox. Turn left and pass under the railway. The station is up the slope to the right. Following the road to the top and turning left will bring the walker to Alton’s takeaway.

Alton station is one of several good examples of shared National Rail/ heritage railway station facilities. The Mid-Hants comes in round the back on platform 3; platform 2 offers a through connection for the occasional special running straight through to Alresford plus periodic stock moves. The original footbridge survives, though sealed off, at time of writing following a campaign that it is part of the heritage air of the station. Its replacement is fitted with lifts and is a considerably longer walk for anyone unfortunate enough to find their train home leaves from the 2/3 island.

This is an innocent and scenic little walk, probably best done as part of a day out on the Conwy Valley line rather than justifying a day out in its own right.

___…___

The Conwy Valley line is a lightly-used route through lightly-populated countryside with a lightly-provided service. The timetable is, like all ATW services, based around a clockface hour; here trains leave Llandudno Junction for Blaenau Ffestiniog around xx:30 and return from Blaenau around xx:35. Owing to limited rolling stock, limited traffic and limited infrastructure, two out of every three of these hourly trains do not run. Some careful timekeeping is required to avoid being isolated in a notoriously wet corner of Snowdonia, particularly if aiming to make a Porthmadog connection at Blaenau.

Pont-y-Pant is a pleasantly-placed little station, unencumbered by the presence of Pont-y-Pant itself; the community is a fictional creation of the London & North Western Railway and what housing does exist is situated on the A470 on the other side of the river. The station building remains, splendidly whitewashed and privately owned. Look out for evidence that the customer information system works and any signage remaining from previous train operators.

Turn right on leaving the station and follow the lane southwards up the valley. This follows the railway for a little way and then kinks up the hillside to a farm, where it ends. Pass the farm and continue along the successor track, which drops gently down over a ridge and falls to the valley bottom. A bridge under the railway leads out onto the floodplain of the Lledr and some pleasing views.

Follow the track southwards as it wavers around the riverbank before regaining its road status and rises up to Dolwyddelan station.

The station used to have an island platform, access only from the overbridge (which carries the “Sarn Helen” Roman road) and a crossing loop. An off-pattern service from Blaenau is timed to cross one of the “ghost” paths here. Not much actually happens here now, although those who alighted from a Blaenau-bound train at Pont-y-Pant have a reasonable chance of getting here in time to see it heading back to Llandudno.

Drop out of the station and use the nicely-modernised (a long time ago) Sarn Helen to cross the river to the community of Dolwyddelan, which like the community at Pont-y-Pant is located on the A470.

Those used to the impressively straight lines of Watling Street and the Fosse Way will find Sarn Helen to be somewhat off the usual concept of Roman roads. There is a limit as to the ability to go in straight lines for thirty-odd miles in this terrain, so it wobbles its way across the mountain tops. It is alleged to have been built to allow a Roman Emperor to reach Caernarfon and collect the (literal) girl of his dreams. One has to have reasons for major infrastructure investment, after all.

For obvious reasons, when building the main turnpike road to Holyhead (now the A5) Thomas Telford used Watling Street to Shrewsbury and then took a lower route via Chirk, Llangollen and Betws-y-Coed to Bangor. It has some nasty curves, but avoids the bleaker mountain summits.

Once across the river and in Dolwyddelan, turn left and follow the A470 southwards. A pavement is kindly supplied, although at one point it turns into a lay-by. The Welsh Government is yet to follow their lead further south at Builth and recycle the pavement as part of a wider road.

Shortly after the lay-by, fork off up the byway that climbs off to the right. This swings gently round the hillside to a sign pointing to the left for the ticket office for the castle. This is awkwardly situated down in the farm (specifically it’s the farmer’s wife at the back door of the house) some sixty feet below the castle itself. If intending to explore the castle (a large tower on an outcrop) drop down to the farmhouse, buy tickets as required and then climb up back here before pressing on up the back of the outcrop.

The castle has been coming in and out of view for a while, but is still quite something when actually reached. For all that it is one tower with a few ruins dotted around, its bleak situation tucked amongst the mountains gives it a grandeur lacked by larger castles sat in big cities. And while minimal in itself, the views are worth the entry fee.

Once down from the castle, turn left and press on up the byway over the next rocky outcrop. It then drops gently down into the valley near Roman Bridge. On gaining the road, turn left to drop down to the water and the bridge itself.

There is no centre of population here to speak of – merely a few scattered farmhouses around a bridge over the river. Thus having decided to build a station here – stark in its isolation amongst the mountains and wearing a coat of whitewash to match Pont-y-Pant – the London & North Western had to call the platform something and so why not Roman Bridge? Except, of course, for the small matter that the Roman road is at Dolwyddelan and the ramshackle stone bridge here has no particular historic connotations…

Follow the road as it snakes around the base of the hillock and then drops over the precipices to the station. Roman Bridge is well-maintained and provided with a customer information system. This draws train running information from the railway’s signalling which, like the train service, is sporadic. In 2015 it was Wales’s second-least-used station (Pont-y-Pant was fifth-least). The building was recently for sale for £450,000, including fishing rights. Aside from the railway station, there are no other facilities in the neighbourhood.

Railway, river and passable track head two miles further up the valley (which can be followed by turning right at the end of the byway instead of left) before all comes to an abrupt halt beneath Moel Dyrnogydd. The river twirls up a gully, the road gives up and the railway plunges into a 2½-mile tunnel to emerge amongst the slate tips of Blaenau Ffestiniog.